This is my prediction for Tuesday’s election — the Republican Party will lose control of the White House and lose more seats in Congress. Why? Because they abused their power at the expense of the common good and Americans are furious about the outcomes:

1) Failure to protect the United States from the terroristic acts of Sept. 11, 2001.

3) Passage of the U.S. Patriot Act I and U.S. Patriot Act II, stripping several of our civil rights including the right to privacy and right to a fair trial.

4) Invading two sovereign nations, Afghanistan and Iraq, allegedly in response to 9-11, at the costs of hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and much good will from our allies. (more…)

Tonight’s presidential debate could be way more interesting if McCain isn’t there. The absence of the Republican nominee would clear the way for a more diverse representation of U.S. political philosophy — that is, a debate amongst the Democratic nominee and the nominees of at least three minor parties.

Presidential debates in the U.S. are usually carefully orchestrated by the leadership of the Democrat and Republican parties to exclude all other political parties in the country. Their reasoning? They say it’s justified because they are the most popular (or “largest,” “most powerful,” “most bankrolled by lobbyists and corporations”) parties (more…)

Senator and assumed Republican nominee for President, John McCain, today described his likely Democrat rival for said office as the “wrong change.” McCain’s “clever” inversion of Senator Barack Obama’s central campaign slogan — combined with observations about the state of things as we quietly drift toward the second decade of the 21st Century — leads us to a new, entirely more powerful thought: the only change worth describing as the “wrong” change is no change.

Now less than nine months before the 2008 election, I propose a bold new strategy for the complete removal of Republicans from power — whenever you find yourself in a conversation about any news regarding a Republican candidate, verbally respond by saying “Who cares? They’re going to lose.”

What would happen if citizens give up on protecting their rights? Here’s a glimpse of an answer political philosopher Robert A. Dahl wrote in his On Democracy (2000, Yale University Press) reflecting on the moment Thomas Jefferson ended the Alien and Sedition Act in the late 1800s in support of the Right to Free Speech:

If and when many citizens fail to understand that democracy requires certain fundamental rights, or fail to support the political, administrative, and judicial institutions that protect those rights, then their democracy is in danger.

In this good year 2008, let’s boot out of office everyone who has shown they lean more heavily toward authoritarianism than toward protecting our rights. Bye Republicans — you’re time to destroy our democracy will soon end.

Patriot Day number six has come and gone, yet the chief architect of the great crimes that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001 — Osama Bin Laden — is still free. How did this happen? And, what will the president who replaces George W. Bush on January 1, 2009, do to bring him to justice? (more…)